Quantification in Old Italian

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Guido Mensching; Professorin Dr. Cecilia Poletto
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2014 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 256240798

• Final Report Year: 2024

Final Report Abstract

The aim of the project was to analyze the Old Italian (OI = Old Florentine) quantifier system. In the first part of the project (running until 3/2017), around 4,200 example sentences with the quantifiers niente, neuno, nessuno, alcuno, veruno, tutto, nullo, were extracted from the OVI corpus. The data was classified using data tables and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. To this end, we developed an elaborate system of identifiers (tags). Here are just a few of the results: We analyzed the noun cosa 'thing' as a kind of “light noun” that could interact with different quantifiers; alcuno 'any/anyone' functioned in AI as a negative polarity element and shows a complex interaction with negation and negative quantifiers. In our analysis of negative elements or so-called “n-words”, we were able to show that these had different interpretations depending on their structural position. This required us to examine and reinterpret the functioning of negation in OI. The optionality of “negative concord” in OI, as assumed in the literature on Old Romance, proved to be only apparently correct. In the second phase of the project, our empirical data collection was completed by approx. 7500 example sentences with further quantifiers (in particular molto, distributive quantifiers such as ogni, chiunque, ciascun, catun as well as existential quantifiers of the type qual(e)-X). The evaluation of the data made possible by the tags served as the basis for answering numerous research questions regarding the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of quantifiers in OI. Finally, we investigated which changes have occurred on the way to MI and parallels in other Romance languages, including phenomena of language contact. From a theoretical point of view, we have gained valuable insights into areas such as discontinuity, the internal structure of Q-heads, the syntactic and semantic development of free-choice elements, negation, grammaticalization (in particular the development of quantifiers and indefinites from free relative clauses) and phase theory.

Publications

• A diachronic study of the (negative) additive anche in Italian. Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia, 227-258.
  Franco, Irene; Kellert, Olga; Mensching, Guido & Poletto, Cecilia
  
• On (negative) indefinites in Old Italian. Paper presented at the 38th Jahrestagung der DGfS, University of Konstanz, 24–25 February 2016
  Franco, I.; Kellert, O.; Mensching, G. & Poletto, C.
  
• Optional Negative Concord with preverbal N-words. Paper presented at the mini-workshop on negative quantification, University of Frankfurt, June 1 2016
  Franco. I & Poletto, C.
  
• Additive and aspectual anche in Old Italian. Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory, 127-142.
  Franco, Irene; Kellert, Olga; Mensching, Guido & Poletto, Cecilia
  
• The distribution of quantifiers in Old and Modern Italian. Oxford Scholarship Online. Oxford University Press.
  Garzonio, Jacopo & Poletto, Cecilia
  
• La diacronía del indefinido cualquiera, in J. M. Santos Rovira (ed.), Raíces y horizontes del Español. Perspectivas dialectales, históricas y sociolingüísticas. Lugo: Axac, 57–67
  Kellert, O.
  
• On “partitive dislocation” in Sardinian: A Romance and Minimalist perspective. Linguistics, 58(3), 805-835.
  Mensching, Guido
  
• Evaluative Meanings of Indefinites: A Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis of Spanish cualquiera and Related Elements. Habilitationsschrift, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
  Kellert, Olga
  
• Free choice indefinites in Old and Modern Italian, Journal of Historical Syntax 5.9 (special issue: P. Crisma & G. Longobardi (eds), Proceedings of DiGS 20)
  Kellert, O.
  
• The Evaluative Meaning of the Indefinite qualunque in (Old) Italian. Determiners and Quantifiers, 246-284.
  Kellert, Olga
  
• Very …. Extracted: On Old Italian molto, in S. Baauw, F. Drijkoningen & L. Meroni (eds), Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018: Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 249-262
  Rossi S. & Poletto, C.
  
• Bare quantifiers and verb second: The view from Old Italian. In N. Catasso, M. Coniglio & C. De Bastiani (eds), Language Change at the Interfaces: Intrasentential and Intersentential Phenomena. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 95-122
  Rossi, S. & Poletto, C.
  
• The Old Sardinian quantifier tot (t) u ‘all’: (Lack of) agreement and a universal numeric quantifier construction. Journal of Historical Syntax, 7(6-19), 1-26.
  Mensching, G.
  
• Argentinian Spanish cualunque and Italian qualunque, in O. Kellert, M. Rosemeyer & S. Lauschus (eds), Indefinites in Romance and Beyond. Berlin: Language Science Press, 45–8
  Kellert, O. & Francia, M.
  
• Indefinites and quantifiers in Old Sardinian: A corpus-based study, in O. Kellert, M. Rosemeyer & S. Lauschus (eds), Indefinites in Romance and Beyond. Berlin: Language Science Press, 177–214
  Mensching, G.
  
• Indefinites in Romance and Beyond. Berlin: Language Science Press
  Kellert, O.; Rosemeyer, M. & Lauschus, S.
  
• On the diachrony of Catalan indefinite qualsevol, in O. Kellert, M. Rosemeyer & S. Lauschus (eds.), Indefinites in Romance and Beyond.. Berlin: Language Science Press, 142–177
  Kellert, O. & Enrique-Arias, A.
  
• Universal 20 restriction reloaded. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics, 10(3).
  Balsemin, Tommaso; Pinzin, Francesco & Poletto, Cecilia